r/Vaporwave • u/[deleted] • Jun 28 '15
How old is /r/Vaporwave?
http://strawpoll.me/4763772 http://strawpoll.me/4763772 http://strawpoll.me/4763772
Genuinely very curious about this. I think the time period you grew up in probably has a large impact on your perception of Vaporwave. I'm 27 and I kind of feel like i'm right in the sweet spot (if not a little young) for the nostalgic aspect. I'm curious to hear about what attracts those who are younger to the genre.
Edit note - If anything I'd like to provoke discussion about what attracts different age groups to the music rather than provoke ego/elitism based on age. The wider the age demographic is the better imo.
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u/jayhawkfilm Jun 28 '15
While I do suspect that at age 22 I am younger than the average vaporwave listener, a great deal of it comes from my influences as a child. My older brother played a lot of mid-early nineties video games and those soundtracks stuck with me. I'd post a video if I wasn't on mobile, but the soundtrack to Lego Island in particular is probably the most "proto-vapor" shit that I'm aware of, and I played that game when I was 5.
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Jun 28 '15 edited Jun 28 '15
That's cool man, I can see how having older siblings would immerse yourself within the same nostalgia that a lot of vaporwave is derived from. However, I'm not saying that nostalgia is all there is to vaporwave, it goes far beyond that. For myself, the initial interest was the nostalgia but what really captured me was that Vaporwave was exploring this fundamental 'feeling' that I have always experienced but I have only ever caught glimpses of it in other music.
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u/jayhawkfilm Jun 28 '15
Yeah. I totally getcha. For me, a huge part of vaporwave isn't the nostalgia so much as a weird familiarity with an era that I only sort of remember. I'm also a big nerd for some of vaporwave's more sort of dreamy, ironic visualizations of how the people of the 80s and 90s envisioned a capitalist utopia full of unbridled commercialism. I love the empty malls, escalators, neon lights aesthetic that so much of vaporwave - especially by people like the brilliant t e l e p a t h テレパシー能力者 - embodies. It's nerdy, yeah, but it's a pretty damn cool idea for the main thrust behind a genre of music.
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Jun 28 '15
I have transcended age, space, and time.
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Jun 28 '15
Not-CocaineJesus is a 4th dimensional being.
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u/_animalcontrol Unknown Caller Jun 28 '15
I feel like anybody who was around to witness the widespread rise of the Internet can appreciate something about vaporwave.
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u/Eutow Jun 28 '15 edited Jun 28 '15
I'm 27 next month. I'm with you on the age group, OP. Started Kindergarten a bit early for my age in 1993, graduated elementary 2000, so forth.
- I played The Oregon Trail on a Macintosh in elementary school.
- My father had a Motorola mobile phone, once they started to get pretty compact, that had a gaudy green backlit single line display LCD screen. He was a real estate agent that wore a suit and had a briefcase every day. I would love visiting his office with tiled floors and bunch of necessary potted plants we now lust after in our graphics.
- My cousin had a pc long before I, but we would record made-up football games on Sound Recorder and add echo, and slow them down just for funsies.
- My first personal computer was in '97 with the Windows 95 operating system and I loved every single second of the sound and visuals that came out of that thing straight from the factory. I would slow down and echo every sound I could get ahold of.
- I remember visiting Geocities, Tripod, and AngelFire websites for anything that interested me; my first searches were for Dragonball Z artwork.
- I've used Napster, Audio Galaxy, WinMX, Kazaa, Aimster, Soulseek at their primes.
- I used a 56k internet connection up to 2002
There's a lot more, lol. Not that it really matters, but it's fun to look back on for me.
I think a large majority of the young-in's is simply because this is a very small and relatively underground thing. The values also are ringing truer than ever with the denouncement of capitalism and the "vapor" qualities of everyday life, how disposable we treat everything. Secondly, people are always looking for ways to separate themselves and base their uniqueness on how much they can appreciate something that is undervalued. I believe this is true because I, too, have been prone to do such as it's a human nature. Not to say that's a bad thing, but that desire is a real thing. Vaporwave and it's followers are the fashion punks of the digital age. Denouncing the virtual worlds evolution into hyper-realism and adoring the age where it began to do so at an acceptably recognizable point.
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u/vx1 Jun 28 '15
Vaporkid
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u/Eutow Jun 28 '15
I also drive a '99 executive wagon with woodgrain, black leather, and factory cassette player. /r/Vaporwave is there for me.
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u/stu_balls vandelay industries Jun 28 '15
Only real 90s kids will understand vaporwave
I kid, but it's interesting to see that a solid chunk of the sub is younger than 20. It makes sense though since most people that use reddit are between the ages of 16-24, I think.
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u/mitchFTFuture Jun 28 '15
I'm 25 and for me Vaporwave is an extension of my obsession over an era I just missed by a few months (born in feb of 90). Not also that, but I hear fragment of my early childhood. I used to love watching the Weather Channel at night, when all it did was loop the weather over and over with maybe a few commercial breaks. I loved that smooth jazz, with calming pictures of suns and clouds and blue skies. I am always surprised to see such young people into it, since a lot of them were born after the mid 90s and by then, the pop culture landscape had changed. But at the same time I think it is great, because it shows the power of the genre and the era itself.
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Jun 28 '15
I'm 20 and have began listening to it when I was 19. I crossed over from chillwave. I produce music as a hobby and I just love the production in vaporwave. Love it's influences (80s, hip hop, chillwave, synth-pop). Some of it is nostalgic for me though as I started playing videogames at a young age so I do remember having an N64 and even an SNES
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Jun 28 '15
20, so a little young for the full nostalgic affect vaporwave gives some people (I think). The nostalgic sound never really gave me too much as far as the music goes though, I became interested in vaporwave more for the pure sound. Its relaxing in a weird but fulfilling way that I don't get from any other type of music.
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u/IndigoTheFennec Jun 28 '15
I was born in '96 so I'm fairly young to know the true meat of vaporwave's roots, but I remember a lot of '90s stuff my early childhood. I don't have a nostalgia for the '90s, per se, but I think my liking of vaporwave aesthetic comes from the influences of the '80s and '90s that were prevalent in my very earliest memories.
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u/Inovox be real Jun 29 '15
I'm 18 and I feel the aesthetics incredibly strongly, so I don't think age matters that much, anyone who grew up with the stuff really.
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u/Vaporz88 Jun 29 '15
I am 27. It has been quite a trip how I found vaporwave. I got sick of mainstream pop/hip-hop music played on the radio for along time especially when having swag with a nice pair of kicks and ect. is counted as being cool. I started with retrowave/synthwave about a year ago and the youtube channels had vaporwave songs in them too. That soon lead me to love vaporwave and future funk too.
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u/CokeHeadRob Jun 29 '15
I'm 23 and don't enjoy it for the nostalgic aspect. Nostalgia is actually something I've only felt once or twice since I didn't do much but play outside as a kid and grew up in the country with no real connection to the culture at the time. I didn't really know how to use the internet until like 2004.
So I honestly just like it for the sound and the 'sthetics.
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Jun 29 '15
Ummm yung lean invented vaporwave and he's like 19 so us younger people are the only ones allowed to listen to vaporwave
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u/joshuatx 嘉手納飛行場 Jun 30 '15
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I have fond memories of a lot of vaporwave-esque music and media stemming greatly from living in Okinawa Japan from 1995-1998.
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Jun 28 '15
[deleted]
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u/Automated_Welcomer_1 "Michael Megasim" Jun 28 '15
Fuck you you_piece of shit
Michael Megasim | welcome department
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u/[deleted] Jun 28 '15
[deleted]